classification

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. The act, process, or result of classifying.

n. A category or class.

n. Biology The systematic grouping of organisms into categories on the basis of evolutionary or structural relationships between them; taxonomy.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The act of forming into a class or classes; a distribution into groups, as classes, orders, families, etc., according to some common relations or attributes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. The act of forming into a class or classes; a distribution into groups, as classes, orders, families, etc., according to some common relations or affinities.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

n. The act of forming a class or of dividing into classes; the act of grouping together those beings or things which have certain characters in common; distribution into sets, sorts, or ranks; taxonomy.

n. In shipbuilding, the assignment to and arrangement of merchant vessels in classes by registration societies. See class, n., 8.

These relations existed before man was created; they have existed ever since the beginning of time; hence, what we call the classification of facts is not the work of his mind in any direct original sense, but the recognition of an intelligent action prior to his own existence.